A Microsoft Windows Azure primer: the basics

Microsoft's Windows Azure cloud computing platform has been gaining steam since its launch to paying customers in February. Just last week it reached 10,000 customers; already, Azure is shaping up to be a strong contender in the nascent cloud computing market.

Though the cloud offerings available from companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are broadly similar—they each offer the basic building blocks of "computation" (i.e. applications), and "storage"—the way in which these services are offered is quite different. There are other providers out there beyond these three, but these household names are broadly representative of the market, and arguably the most important in terms of market adoption and influence...